Richard for snipping string-beans.



W. E. URSCHEL.

APPARATUS FOR SNIPPING STRING BEANS.

APPLICATION FILED DEC. 31. 1917- 1,256,492.

Patented Feb. 12,1918.

3 SHEETS-SHEET 1.

m! v O O O INVENTOR I {2 i 0 BY I ,4 ITORNEY- W. E. URSCHEL. APPARATUS FOR SNIPPINGSTRING BEANS.

' Patented Feb. 12, 1918.

9256 9492. APPUCAT'ON FILED 05c, 3|

nu l m I wi u is mg liTTOR/VEY W. E. URSCHEL.

APPARATUS FOR SNIPPING STRING BEANS.

APPLICATION FILED DEC. 31. 1912.

1,256,492. Patented Feb.12,1918.

3 SHEETS-SHEET 3.

I ATTOREEK WILLIAM E. URSCHEL, 0F VALPARAISO, INDIANA, ASSIGNOR '10 GHISHOLM-SCOTT COMPANY, OF CADIZ, OHIO, A PARTNERSHIP.

APPARATUS FOR SNIPPING STRING-BEANS.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Patented Feb. 12, 1%18.

Original application filed February 10, 1916, Serial No. 77,455. Divided and this application filed December 31, 1917. Serial No. 209,728.

T 0 all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, WILLIAM E. URsoHEL, a citizen of the United States, residing at Valparaiso, in the county of Porter and State of Indiana, have invented a new and useful Improvement in Apparatus for Snipping String-Beans, of which the following is a specification.

My invention relates to an apparatus for cutting off or severing the ends of so-called' string beans, whether these be of the string or stringless variety and whatever be their color, so that the beans, with their ends thus severed or snipped, may be utilized by canning and conserving factories or be otherwise used for food purposes. Various machines have been previously devised to snip string beans automatically as distinguished from cutting off their ends by hand, but none, so far as known to me, have as yet come into commercial use. My machine, on the other hand, has displaced hand labor and the product resulting from it is superior to that produced in the hand operation, for it secures a more uniform cutting, it can remove a smaller portion of the end than is usually done by the unskilled or careless hand operators and it wastes a smaller percentage of the pods in the mass.

Figure 1 is a side elevation;

Fig. 2 is a longitudinal central section;

Fig. 3 is a detail of one form of severing device;

Fig. 4 is a detail of a spiral or Archimeciean screw which may be employed.

Fig. 5 is a transverse section of the operating cylinder showing a few beans under treatment, and

Fig. 6 is a detail showing the operation of snipping and of holding the tapered ends of the beans against further protrusion by the surrounding walls of the aperture.

There is a base plate 1, supporting brackets 2 which carry a shaft 3 from which hang supports 4 to which are attached one end of the frame 5, the other end of the frame being adjustably supported by links 6 from the end of the base plate. Thus the inclination of the frame 5 may be changed at will. To opposite ends of the frame 5 are secured the bottoms of annular castings 7 and 8, the tops of these castings being connected by tie rods 9 for greater rigidity. From the top of the annular casting 7 depends a bracket 10 and from the top of the annular casting 8 depends a bracket 11 in the ends of which brackets the shaft 12 is supported.

The shaft 12 carries a cylinder in which the beans are treated. The cylinder consists of two end plates 13 and 14 which have spokes radiating from hubs supported on the shaft 12, and the plates 13 and 14, in turn, support the cylindrical surface of the drum which is provided with those apertures or perforations through which the ends of the beans project. Such apertures are shown in the shape of circumferent-ially running slots 15 near the feed end of the cylinder, in the shape of axially running slots 16 near the center of the cylinder and of diagonal slots 17 near the discharge end of the cylinder. It will be seen from Figs. 5 and 6 that the inside of the openings 15, 16, 17 are tapered or beveled so as to flare outwardly toward the axis. This is a valuable feature assisting the ends of the beans to tures.

more readily protrude through the apertures 15 and 16, I have indicated a common type of harvester cutter shown in Fig. 3, which, as is Well known, consists of a set of stationary teeth 18 having sharp cutting edges with reference to which a series of cutting teeth 19 reciprocate so that the part of the bean which projects through the aperture or slot in the cylinder will be caught between these two sharp teeth and be sheared off. I find it unnecessary to illustrate the mechanism of reciprocating the teeth 19 since such is most common and well understood. In cotiperation with the holes 17 and some of the holes 16, I show a common stationary knife 20 which is pressed against the surface of the cylinder in someelastic manner not necessary to illustrate. I may say that while I may use several different shapes of openings all in one cylinder, I am naturally not limited to have the openings in one cylinder of different shapes.

Running from end to end of the cylinder tance which is less than the length ofthe nation of the cylinder.

.bean. An inspection of Fins. 2 and 4 shows that the interior of the drum also carries .an Archimedean screw or spiral 22. One purpose of this spiral or Archimedean screw is to gradually feed the beans from the feed to the discharge end; but this is subordinate for this feeding is also effected by the incli- The more important function of this Archimedean screw or spiral the adjacent plates of which, it will be observed, are also closer together than is the length of the bean, is to keep the beans to a greater or less extent crosswise of the cylinder in its rotation. The adjacent plates of the spiral andthe adjacent longitudinal bars 21 thus form pockets in which a bean cannot lie flat. They must be more or less upright, as seen in Fig. 5.

One of the many ways of making this drum is to build it in four quadrants, as shown in Fig. 5, the adjacent edges of the quadrants coming flush together and the four quadrants being secured by tie rods 23 running from end to end of the cylinder and fastening in its end plates 13, 14. Each of the quadrantal sections may have secured thereto its portion of the spiral 22, so that each quarter of the cylinder carries a number of longitudinally spaced apart quarters of the spiral, and the adjacent edges of the spiral will be made to register to form a complete spiral. It will be equally feasible to build the spiral into the cylinder as a whole.

I may say, in conclusion, that I can also use a rotary brush 24 at the edge of the cylinder so as to brush out any beans which happen to be stuck and that the end plate 13 is shown as provided with a circular or pulley surface 71, that the brush shaft carries a.

pulley 72 and that there is an idler pulley 7 3 over which pulleys a belt may be passed to drive these parts.

I shall now describe the mode of operation of this machine, the mechanical construction of which has just been set forth. String beans have various shapes, being sometimes straight, sometimes twisted and sometimes hooked or curved. In my machine the shape of the pod of the bean has little or nothing to do with the final result. On the contrary the mode of operation of my machine depends upon the fact that both ends of string beans are tapered and my'apparatus utilizes this taper in order to effect the snipping' To this end the apertures in the drum are made of a size large enough to permit the point of the bean to projecttherethrough by a proper amount, but sufficiently small to have the walls of the perforations support the taper against further protrusion. They permit the tapered bean ends to partially protrude. By reason of this arrangement I am enabled to feed a mass of string beans into my apparatus, to present them to the perforations in the drum and to have the ends of some of the beans pass through these perforations and be snipped off and to continue this process, in a-jpromiscuous way, presenting thereafter to the perforations in the drum not merely those beans whose ends have not been snipped, but also such as have had their ends sufiiciently removed, for these iatter will be supported by some points in or near the bounding edges or walls of the per foration, which points I shall call the walls of the perforations, in a manner which will not permit them to further project by any substantial amount so that they will escape the further action of the knife. This is one function of my apparatus, namely the presentation of the tapered bean-ends, whether these have already been cut or have not as yet been cut, to the apertures of the described size in the container and this is an indiscriminate and promiscuous way where by, however, only those bean ends are snipped which have not previously been adequately snipped.

In order to emphasize another cardinal feature of my apparatus, I will assume for the moment, that the interior of the drum is quite plain and unprovided with longitudinal bars 21 or transverse plates 22. I find that under such circumstances the rotation of the drum will simply cause the beans to move about on the bottom, very much as does material in a rotary sieve, but that the tendency of the beans will be to lie fiatwise which gives them little opportunity to have the endsdirected endwise toward orto pass through the perforations. I therefore find it necessary to provide a means for directing the bean-ends endwise toward the perforations and such means I desire to claim in the broadest possible aspect.

In the machine which I illustrate such directing means'for the bean-ends are constituted, very. specifically considered, by the bars 21, which are placed more closely to: gether than the end of the bean and by the adjacent plates 22, which are also spaced apart by a distance less than the bean length. The fact that the blades 22 are 'close together compels the beans to he more or less transversely of the drum and the fact that the bars 21 are sufficiently close causes the body of the bean to be supported by their upper edges, as a result of which, since the point of the bean is pulled down by gravity, the bean-end is more or less upright or at right angles to the plane of the perforations so that the bean-end is directed endwise toward vices that upright the bean to an extent sufiicient for the purpose intended. Still more specifically considered they are open pockets having dimensions in general less than, the length of the bean.

The pockets formed by the longitudinal bars 21 and the transverse plates 22 constitute a kind of nested egg crate structure in v hich the transverse plates, in the case shown, rise above the longitudinal bars. As just noted, these pockets are open so that as the drum rotates and the beans are carried upwardly, the beans are permitted to freely drop and fall back toward the bottom of the cylinder. vating devices and if we consider the rotation of the drum to be clockwise, it is clear th at the elevation may merely take the beans to the 8 or 9 oclock position from which they tumble or slide back toward the bottom of the cylinder or the elevating devices may lift the beans into the upper half ofthe drum, say to the 11 oclock position, from which they can fall or drop back. This raising of the beans and permitting them to slide, tumble or fall back toward the bottom of the drum causes the beans to frequently reverse their ends, a highly important feature seeing that both ends of the beans must be snipped. From this aspect the bars-21 constitute reversing devices. I may add that the parts of the bars which are effective to effect the uprighting function are their inner edges nearer the axis, the body of the barbeing a more support for these inner edges and I further note that the taper on the bars 21 is sufficiently large to cause the pockets to increase in size in a direction toward the axis of the drum, which means they are non-' wedging in character and will not tend to hold beans locked in them but will permit them to fall freely therefrom as the pockets rise sufliciently above the bottom of the cyl- I have found that quite a small machine, a few feet long, run at a proper speed, will do efficient work but I naturally refer a considerably larger-apparatus 'tjan the one illustrated in th'e;drawings for the sake of showing the principles. 1

This application is a continuation of part of my application Serial Number 77455; tiled February 10, 1916.

I claim: v 1. A machine for snipping string beans which comprises a supporting member to In fact the bars 21 constitute ele- 2. A string bean snipper comprising the combination of a supporting member having a multiplicity of perforations of a size to permit the tapered ends of the beans to protrude therethrough and be supported by its walls against further protrusion; a severing device for snipping the protuding ends; an elevating device for raising the snipped and unsnipped pods abovethe perforated support and thereafter letting them gravitate toward the perforations; and means for directing the bean ends endwise into the perforations, substantially as described.

3. A string bean snipper comprising a rotary drum into which the pods are fed provided with perforations of a size to permit the tapered bean ends to partially protrude; a severing device to snip the protrud? ing' ends; lifting devices for raising the bean above the bottom of the drum; and means for directing the bean-ends endwise toward the perforations as they gravitate downwardly, substantially as described.

4. A string bean snipper comprising a rotary drum into which the pods are fed provided with apertures of a size to permit the tapered bean-ends to partially'protrude; a severing device to snip the protruding ends; and open pockets near the perforations having their general dimensions less than the bean-length to direct the bean ends into the apertures, substantially as described.

5. A string bean snipper comprising a rotary drum into which the beans are fed, provided with perforations of a size to permit the tapered bean-ends to partially protrude therethrough; a severing device .to snip the protruding ends; and uprighting devices to tilt the beans to direct their ends toward the perforations, substantially as described.

6. A string bean snipper comprising a rotary drum into which the pods are fed provided with perforations of a size to permit the tapered bean-ends to partially protrude therethrough; a severing device to snip the protruding ends; and pockets near the perforations which grow broader toward the axis to direct the bean ends into the perforations and prevent wedging of the beans, substantially as described.

snip the protruding ends; and a reversing device to occasionally r verse the position of the beans and thereby eventually present each 'end, in turn. to the perforations,substantially as described.

8. A string bean snipper comprisinga rotary drum into which the parts are fed provided with perforations of a size to perm1t the tapered bean-ends to partially protrude therethrough; a severing device to name to this specification, in the presence of snip the protruding ends, and an Archimetwo subscribing Witnesses. dean screw inside the drum having its adj acent blades closer than a bean length to keep WILLIAM URSCHEL' 5 the beans transverse to the cylinder, substan- Witnesses:

tially as described. FRANK GERBER,

In testimony whereof, I have signed my THOMAS A. Scor'r. 

